America’s Most Affordable Places to Retire

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So, why am I writing about places to retire when I’m nowhere near retirement? Because if a place is affordable for a retiree, then it’s most certainly affordable for a working man, no?

I’m fascinated about places. Whenever I drive through a small town, I’m thinking, “How do people end up living here? What do they do for a living? Do they want to leave but can’t? Did they move here from somewhere else and love it?”

While it does give the ranking, with a small blurb for each city, it didn’t provide additional links for follow-up. So, being an information hound, I rounded up a few links of my own. So, without taking up more time…the rankings (with links):

1. Columbus, Ohio
Did you know Columbus is the capitol of Ohio? Only if you’re a Buckeye fan at which point now hate me. Also home to several corporate headquarters. Why is it affordable? I don’t know, the article doesn’t mention it. I’ll just take their word for it.

2. Fort Worth, Texas
There’s nothing like cruising down the interstate near Forth Worth and seeing a billboard advertising brand new houses for less than $150K. No state income tax is nice touch also (we won’t talk about property taxes). A good night life (I thought retirees slept at night?) also keeps ‘em coming back.

3. Asheville, North Carolina
I live in the south so I definitely would like to research Asheville more in-depth. Asheville has lots of stuff you can do for free. Bands, festivals, art galleries. You name it. Mimes? Not so much my style.

5. Kansas City, Missouri
Not to be confused with Kansas City, Kansas, this Missouri town has a median home price of $118,000. Can’t remember what a median is? It’s the most frequently occurring number in a data set. Don’t care? Me neither. It just means that it’s a better representation of home prices in the area.

6. Columbia, South Carolina
Low housing costs are a big reason to breathe easy. Columbia’s median home price is about $147,000, and average property taxes are just over a grand. And Columbia’s seniors don’t live in conclaves, so house hunters can choose Victorian-style homes on historic streets or ultramodern apartments near the city’s new riverfront esplanade, in a neighborhood dotted with art galleries.

7. Tucson, Arizona
Tucson, Ariz., is a scenic southern landing for birds of all sorts. Northern snowbirds fleeing harsh winters flock here; idle military jets sprawl over a massive aircraft “boneyard” in the city limits; and a breathtaking variety of avian life fills the sky, despite the desert heat.

8. Jacksonville, Florida
It’s generally cheap to live in Jacksonville, compared with the rest of the state. The city’s median home price is $150,500, versus $275,900 in Fort Lauderdale and $291,550 in Miami. Part of the reason housing is so affordable is that the city has never been a vacation spot like many cities farther south.

9. Ann Arbor, Michigan
Much of the city’s activity revolves around the University of Michigan, whose 40,000 undergraduate and graduate students account for about a third of Ann Arbor’s population. And needless to say, the retiree population includes plenty of voluble Wolverine fans.

10. Aurora, Colorado
Home to roughly 300,000, the city covers a whopping 154 square miles and includes nine colleges and universities, seven golf courses, and 10,000 acres of parks, trails, and open space within its city limits. Housing is reasonable, to boot: In 2008, the median home price was $138,000, roughly $40,000 less than in Denver.